This year there's a special gift under the Xmas tree: qooxdoo 0.8.1.

It is quite a comprehensive maintenance release, with a lot of bugs fixed (about 250) since the 0.8 release. Many inconsistencies were resolved, carefully features completed and missing API added. qooxdoo 0.8.1 is recommended as an upgrade for existing 0.8-based applications, migration should be straightforward. This release should also be used by any new users getting started with qooxdoo.

The framework again proofed to quite easily adapt to the various browsers (and browser versions). Especially the state-of-the-art GUI toolkit (introduced with 0.8) and the framework's layered architecture allow for a wide support of all common browsers, even including the latest betas. This time with Google Chrome 1.0 adding to the mix of Firefox, IE, Opera, Safari, there's plenty of runtimes to choose from for your fully cross-browser qooxdoo application.

There have been many improvements for 0.8.1 - all over the framework. For more info please see the detailed release notes. Of course, there haven't only been improvements in the JavaScript framework part of qooxdoo, but also in the accompanying tooling part. For creating impressive rich internet applications (RIAs), one needs to have such a powerful developer tool chain. In 0.8.1 it got further tweaked and pushed, sometimes dropping or replacing inappropriate config options. Feedback to the ongoing progress in this field is always appreciated.

While it should be trivial to setup and use qooxdoo's tool chain for creating and developing applications, some potential users do not feel comfortable enough to do so, for instance when in a hurry evaluating frameworks. There should be an easier way to get a first impression of qooxdoo, at least of the JavaScript coding part. For that purpose a new interactive application was introduced with 0.8.1 called "Playground". It allows you to type in and modify code in a syntax-highlighting editor, and immediately turn that into a live qooxdoo application in the same browser window. There are some samples included as a starting point for your own experiments. Please keep in mind that this brand new app is not meant to be some sort of online IDE, it really just is a playground for some interactive qooxdoo coding experience. It certainly has its limitations and issues. Anyway, let us know if you like it and what could be improved.

There are now six demo apps that come with the framework and are also available online: Demo Browser and Playground for exploring qooxdoo code and features; Feed Reader and Portal to showcase RIA-style and low-level applications; finally API Viewer and Test Runner for either documentation or unit testing.

Download and enjoy the new 0.8.1 release.

Thanks to all the fellow developers, contributors and users of qooxdoo for their great support and collaboration!